De Santa Fe a Santa Fe

We recently returned from a trip to the other Santa Fe - Santa Fe, Argentina in the province of the same name, roughly 300 miles north of Buenos Aires. Jen was scheduled to present a couple of workshops at the teacher training college on Wednesday and Thursday nights, so we took the early bus on Wednesday morning. It wasn't bad - 6 1/2 hours across the pampas in a comfortable seat, some snacks, a John D. MacDonald Travis McGee novel...before we knew it, we were there to be picked up at the station by Claudio and Julieta.

Our new friends had arranged a tour for us of Santa Fe, a city of 450,000, and after a quick lunch, we met up with the Spanish-speaking tour guide from the city, with whom we toured various plazas, churches, and museums. It was pretty interesting (especially the church where a priest had been killed by a jaguar driven inside by flood), but we were tired and Jen had to give a performance at 8:00. We eventually made it back to the Holiday Inn for a rest.

Jen's presentation on "Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom" went well despite the power outage halfway through that plunged the room into darkness. Jen, sans Powerpoint, just kept talking as if nothing had happened. She's a trooper, that girl. Eventually the lights came back on, and afterward several of us headed down to a local restaurant for dinner. Seeing Jen work a crowd for ninety minutes had made me thirsty, and I spotted something on the beer menu called a satelite. Turned out to be a very tall glass of ice cold Santa Fe beer, the pride and joy of the city. I gladly had a couple.

Which brings us to the following day, where we had scheduled a tour of the cerveceria, or brewery, which is more or less Santa Fe's claim to fame. I vaguely remember going on the Coors Brewery tour many years ago in Colorado, but this personalized tour for just the four of us (me, Jen, Julieta, and Boris, an American kid Jen knew) was great. It was all in Spanish, and took us through the whole brewing process. The brewery is massive, the biggest in Argentina, and they brew several different varieties there, including Budweiser and Heineken (yeah, I know). At the end, we bought some cute beer glasses and got some free tickets for beers across the street at the company restaurant.

That night, Jen did another presentation (on "Writing a Statement of Purpose"), this time for a crowd of 170 teachers, students and translators. This workshop involved passing out smooth rocks to each participant and having them find ways to describe their individual rock. Their rocks were then confiscated, only to be re-united with their owners at the end of the presentation. I guess you had to have been there, but it was fun and some of those kids will probably keep "their rock" forever!

We were up and gone the next morning, back on the bus for six hours and back to the bosom of Buenos Aires. Santa Fe is a nice, quiet little city on the Parana River - a lot quieter than BA, and a lot cheaper, too. We met some nice folks there, and I wouldn't mind going back sometime -maybe in the summer when a few satelites of icy Santa Fe beer would taste oh -so- good!

I Came, I Saw, I Kissed a Lot of Dudes

Needless to say, the US does not have a kissing culture. You know, the old-country kind of thing where folks kiss each other on the cheek upon greeting and again upon leave-taking. When I was growing up, such behavior was only seen in movies and usually had something to do with France. At some point in the 70's, the affectation known as the "air-kiss" found it's way from NY to Hollywood and eventually became the rage among scattered pockets of pretentious Americans. In my family, however, nobody kissed anybody. I'm not saying my family was typical, necessarily (heaven-forbid), but Americans traditionally are big on maintaining personal space. In addition, traditional male Americans are big on preserving a masculine image at all costs. A firm handshake, look you in the eye, and, "big boys don't cry". Man-on-man cheek kissing? Oh, hell no!

Europeans are, of course, different, especially those south of the British Isles. Cheek-kissing is de riguer in most cultures, and in some countries is extensive and quite ritualistic. When we were in Georgia, we were amazed to see the elaborate "three-cheek kiss" performed by seemingly all the men who would meet each other in the street. If you run into someone you know, the kissing is on, baby. The key though, is that you have to actually know the person before kissing them. After a few conversations, dinner, and several drinks, our friend Vano kissed me enthusiastically and proclaimed me, "the greatest American". [Glad you noticed, bro!] He should really shave more often.

Which brings us to the kissingest people on earth: the Argentines. All Argentines, men and women, boys and girls, kiss each other once on the right cheek upon meeting and again on saying good-bye ("chao, hasta luego"). It's really kind of nice, but the important difference here is that people enthusiastically kiss total strangers. OK, we know there's nothing inherently wrong with two men kissing, for example...but kissing somebody you've never laid eyes on and haven't even been introduced to is, well...it's a sort of kissing mania. At our first Argentine dinner-party, we arrived a little early and were hanging out in the front room as everyone else arrived. As couples came through the door, they greeted the hostess and then made a beeline for me - the next nearest person - to kiss me. "Hi, I'm Joe" came sometime after the smooching. As it was a large party, I must have kissed twenty complete strangers (half of them guys) in a matter of minutes.

Everybody wants to kiss you. The waiter at the Peruvian restaurant wants to kiss us. The guy at the art supply store. Random people lean in for some kissing at the drop of a hat. If you stick your hand out for a shake, you will get surprised (and slightly hurt) looks. In private conversations with some locals, I've heard the opinion that "perhaps we Argentines kiss too much". Of course, during cold and flu season my own thoughts turn to germs. The CDC in Atlanta would not approve of all this kissing, would they? Someone said that they don't like kissing in the summer because people are too sweaty. Great. Whiskers AND sweat. MMWWAAAHH! I can't wait...